Fork: bishop to g4 (e2)
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The tactical motive
Fork: one piece attacks two targets at once — they can't both be saved.
Difficulty 1548 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
White to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A fork is one piece attacking two targets at once. Look for a knight, pawn or queen move that lands where it hits the king (or a bigger piece) and a second undefended unit on the same turn — the opponent can save only one.
General method: before you move, list the forcing candidates — every check, every capture, every direct threat — and calculate those first. The solution to a tactic is almost always among them.
Position on the board
White: king g1, queen h5, rook a1 e1, bishop e2, knight a3, pawn a2 b2 f2 c4 e4 d5 g5.
Black: king g8, queen h3, rook c8 f8, bishop a6 g7, knight h7, pawn h4 c5 e5 b6 d6 a7 f7.
13 white and 14 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 26.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 3 points of material (32 against 35; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on g1, the black king on g8.
It is White to move on move 26, with 27 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 7 pawns, Black 7. No file is fully open, so the heavy pieces have to be pried in. Half-open for White: h.
Black hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. The White king has 0 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
26. Bg4 Qxg4+ 27. Qxg4
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to g4 keeps the pressure (+4.0).
- Well found: queen to g4 (+3.9).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qxg4+, then Qxg4 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 26. Bg4 — bishop to g4
- Qxg4+ — queen to g4 (capture) with check
- 27. Qxg4 — queen to g4 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Quiet move
No check, no capture — yet this modest move decides the game.
A quiet move gives no check and takes nothing — yet it decides the game by creating an unstoppable threat or stealing the king's last square. This is the hardest class of moves: the eye hunts for loud blows while a modest shift does the winning. The clue: every forcing try runs into a defense, so seek the move that strengthens the threat or takes squares away. Train yourself to ask: what if I neither capture nor check, but quietly improve?
Only move
Everything else loses — find the only move that holds.
An only move is a position where everything loses except one single continuation. You cannot play "by hand" here: run through fundamentally different defenses — run away, block, trade, counterattack — and discard the ones that fail. The hallmark of these puzzles is that the obvious moves lose quickly while the solution often looks strange. First understand exactly what the threat is — then the one saving move reveals itself.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 011
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